


Peeves of an Improbable Prefect

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-22
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Ron hates being a prefect</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peeves of an Improbable Prefect

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/sistermadly/profile)[**sistermadly**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/sistermadly/) for the Ron Ficathon 2004.

Sometimes Ron really hated being a prefect.

He got teased. All the time. The twins were the worst, of course, but he'd expected thathe could even guess what they were up to sometimes, having watched them perfect their tactics on Percy for three years. That didn't mean it wasn't bloody annoying when his badge emitted a high-pitched squeal for days, or when something that looked like an innocuous letter from home exploded, branding a bright purple _P_ on his forhead.

(That had taken the better part of a morning to get off, while Harry quietly laughed at him and Hermione pounded on the door of their dormitory and yelled. He never had told her what happened; he'd rather fight bare fists with Aragog.)

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if his mum didn't encourage them, though. Okay, maybe that was the wrong word. She didn't encourage it, but she invited it, with the way she acted and the things she said. When Ginny said she didn't care that _she_ wasn't a prefect, Mum had given her a lecture about ambition and achievement and wrapped it up with a resounding, _"Why can't you be more like _Ron?" He'd nearly choked to death on his breakfast hearing that. Wasn't it Percy she was meant to compare them to? ...well, once, maybe. Now all of a sudden it was him, and it gave him the mad urge to go hide under his bed. Ron was _not_ Percy; he really hoped she realized that.

His friends didn't seem to care about it, either. Harry at least had an excuse, what with You-Know-Who wanting to kill him and all, but everyone else seemed to think at best the whole thing was a big joke. Except for Seamus, who apparently thought Ron was out to get him. He'd be talking about something completely different, like girls or Quidditch or homework, and suddenly look at Ron sideways and say something like _"unless Ron here is gonna give me a detention for it" _or_ "as long as I have Mr. Prefect's approval, of course" _like he was challenging him or something. Maybe he was still sore about last year, but Dean did it, too, sometimes. Then again, maybe Dean seriously thought he'd give him detentions for a year for kissing Ginny.

(He wouldn't, of course. Hermione would kill him first.)

It all might have been tolerable if he'd at least gotten a little respect from the lower years. Instead, he got a bewitched paper airplane in the eye. _That_ little bastard had gotten detentions with Hagrid for a straight week from Hermione, which sort of made up for it, but only just. The midgets were cheeky, unruly, loud, and above all, increadibly _stupid_hexing each other right in front of him and letting Dungbombs explode in their pockets. He got enough of Fred and George's product line at home without having to deal with it at school, baby-sitting first-years in an empty classroom on a rainy day. When he caught some industrious little brat handing out sweets from a Skiving Snackbox in a lavatory, he flushed the lot of them down the nearest commode. It was _not_ his fault the bloody thing exploded (though Hermione seemed to think it was).

And these days he didn't have any time; when he wasn't doing homework he was decorating the Great Hall, or baby-sitting midgets, or trying to explain to Katie Bell that she had to reschedule Quidditch practice _again_. The third or fourth time that had happened, she'd burst into tears and ran to her dormitory, and he'd spent the rest of the day trying to explain himself to various Gryffindor girls who came out of nowhere to indigninantly ask _what have you _done_ to poor Katie?_ He'd ended up apologizing to her without any idea what he was apologizing for, and Hermione refused to talk to him for nearly a week.

And to crown it all off, there were meetings like this one, once a week in the Transfiguration classroom. It was the only place besides History of Magic he'd ever feared he actually might die of boredom. They were run by Eustacia Boggs, the Head Girl, who had all the neurotic enthusiasm of Oliver Wood and all the leadership quality of Snape; the Head Boy this year was small and quiet, and Ron had forgotten his name, so he privately dubbed him Woa, for "waste of air." Draco Malfoy always sat across from him and bothered himwhistling, pulling faces, passing him nasty notes, and kicking him under the table, and if he ignored him it only got worse. Last year Hermione had had to take away his wand before every meeting to keep him from killing the blond git; this year Ron just wanted to know what his problem was. Why couldn't he just leave go kill a puppy or something, and leave him alone?

"...also, we've been having a great deal of trouble with younger students in the corridors after-hours, so from now on the sixth year prefects will have the additional duty of patrolling certain areas after nine o'clock. You are to issue two detentions with an appropriate member of the staff for a first offense..."

__

Brilliant, Ron thought, trying to balance his quill on its tip while Hermione took down notes. _This time Katie's going to have some kind of episode. _He got the quill to stand up for a moment; Malfoy leaned across the table and blew it over. Ron glared at him, until Hermione nudged him with her elbow.

"...Patil is to take the entrance hall; Goldstein, Macmillan and Abbott will patrol outside the castle; and Granger and Weasley together will take the Astronomy Tower."

Ron said up abruptly, bringing the two front legs of his chair crashing to the ground. He looked at Hermione; she was blushing slightly, not looking up, and her quill had gone still on the parchement. He grinned at her, and she cleared her throat.

Sometimes he loved being a Prefect.


End file.
